Will April be the 100th Warmest On Record?

NOAA monthly weather summaries normally describe the month in terms of their warmness ranking. April is looking like an interesting month, with remarkably consistent cold across the entire US. Much of the center of the country has been 2 to 6 degrees below normal. In parts of the Dakotas, 10 or more degrees below normal.

136 thoughts on “Will April be the 100th Warmest On Record?”

Somebody is nuts if they think my region of NNW Ca is warmer. It’s been brutal, with icy winds running down everyones backside. And, just like last year, once those winds appear in the forecast, they last 2-5 times longer than the meteorologist originally predicted. Only this year, they are cold winds.
100th warmest in 100 years.
That about sums it up so far.

It’s the damn sunspots. They have nothing to do with earth temperature so it shouldn’t matter that we haven’t seen more than a couple in more than a year. You see it’s all related to C02 – and the cause of it all?? Soylent green!

But Rob you know the good ole governor of the your state [a mighty state which has a higher GDP than many NATIONS of the world]….is still going to blame the fires and drought and everything on Global Warming [as Scwharzzneg… has done].
PDO PDO PDO [and solar enhanced].
When will these people put the science fiction of AGW to rest?? [I like Arnolt overall “I’ll be bok”]
But when the climes of the world start trending toward more extremes in baby, little, or full-on ice-ages [or more realistically, just a deep Dalton-like minimum]…regardless, tendencies toward more extremes is not necessarily a good thing.
Colder, windier, drier, and dustier. Yuck.
I will take temperate “Green”land any day.
May we be prepared….in this 100th warmest April.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA

Last spring was a little slow to develop in the growing areas for wine grapes in the State of Washington, that is, east of the Cascade Mountains. Many growers reported a 2 week delay in early vine development. Eventually the grapes caught up and the wine folks, as usual, reported the grapes finished splendidly.
This year so far, and the “through the 20th” map shown, suggest a similar pattern — for a small global cooling will not drive warm and sunny days from the mid-Washington summer.
The report in the fall will be that the grapes did splendidly. The vines are marvelous things and seem to respond to climatic fluctuations nicely. [Well there are limits.] You can find studies – based on models of a warming climate – claiming dire times are ahead for the wine industry. I have yet to see a study based on a cooling climate.
Why is that?

The esteemed Dr. Hansen said that 2009 may be the warmest year ever, so people who think they are cold really should stop complaining.
Without proper peer review, the vast majority of people are not qualified to determine whether or not it is cold outside, or even if the Emperor is clothed.

Steven Goddard,
You are correct. Those people who have frozen to death were probably not scientists at all. They were only trusting those scientists who said that it was getting warmer, so they did not take proper precautions.
Anyway since they were not scientists, and they are dead, they obviously can contribute nothing to this debate. AGW stumbles on!!!

I’m just curious as to when I can shut my heat off. It comes on constantly. Low tonight is 38. Forecasted low tomorrow night is 38. And I live in a true Southern State (1861). Again, I’m sooo glad I put in that new gas furnace. Ah, my heat just kicked on again. Time for bed.

Judging by the conditions and the poor locations of the temperature stations, it is not surprising they are measuring warmer temperatures during these colder than normal months… people have to heat their spaces more, and considering that most furnaces have a very poor efficiency, most of the energy goes outside, which contributes to the global temperature anomaly.

Mike Bryant (22:00:27) :
Steven Goddard,
You are correct. Those people who have frozen to death were probably not scientists at all. They were only trusting those scientists who said that it was getting warmer, so they did not take proper precautions.
Anyway since they were not scientists, and they are dead, they obviously can contribute nothing to this debate. AGW stumbles on!!!
There are only reports of people freezing to death… such reports probably originate from, and are paid for by Big Oil.
I have heard that Climate Models have predicted that the Earth will be 0.2 degrees Celsius warmer this decade – so therefore 2009 and 2010 will definently warm up.
Whoops – forgot that I’m an AGW Sceptic.

Warmest April this year? It’s not even warmer than an average March yet. The local temps here at the north end of SF Bay are running below the March averages, both in high temp and low. Today’s temps are 5°C below the average highs for April and 2°C below the average April lows. (But, of course, that’s just weather.)
Perhaps all those Priuses and curly light bulbs already purchased have proved sufficient to stop global warming. No need for cap and trade now (except to fund profligate federal spending going forward).

It is TOTALLY not WARM here in SW Washington State! I was all around town trying to find a job in ICE COLD RAINING WEATHER! If they say its gonna be the 100th Warmest April on record, then i must beg to differ. Sure it was nice for a day or 2 but then that all stopped and the miserable cold weather came back. I heard on the news that the snow level is gonna drop to 1400 feet and by tomorrow i will be seeing snow on hilltops.

Come on folks, the warming continues – Its just trapped in the pipeline and will come on like gangbusters in 10 or 20 years.
A very wise man once said “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t all the people all of the time.”
I think we are seeing this wisdom played out with AGW. The question though is whether enough of the people realize they are being led off a cliff like lemmings before they reach the edge.

Hehe,
what will actually be very nice in my opinion is the reaction some of you might have when global April anomalies will be out. Following UAH, April should be the 2nd or 3rd warmest.
“How, what? With all this solar minimum stuff and and the news of cooling? The numbers must be manipulated”
I can already hear it :0)

The 4/1 though 4/13 departure from normal map suffers from color abuse, which is still a pet peeve of mine.
NOAA used green shades for ranges colder than normal, and yellow for the first range warmer than normal. Since “normal” doesn’t belong to any actual range, but is the boundary between light green and yellow, there isn’t any fair representation of regions that are actually “normal”. That itself has biased NOAA’s presentation in favor of things not being normal.
A much fairer color scheme would center the ranges on ZERO, and use green colors for the three ranges at the center.
As it is, all that green spread everywhere looks “good”, and the yellow dots are cautions, while the truth is that almost everywhere was normal or a little colder, the midwest a lot colder, and just a few spots a little warmer.

Uh oh.. wait.. that chart cant be right, maybe we should tweek the color scheme from blues to light oranges to red .. there.. thats better:) And while were at it can we add a little more adjustment to the records..since they obviously cant be right, must be equiptment malfunction… Im freezing errrr melting here:)
Actually It was a pretty nice day, we’re between storms and I dont want to jinx it.. (looks around for Gore to fly by again)
Hehe anomalies is the only word I can spell 16 different ways and all of them will be wrong:P Our problem is that we got caught discussing actual temps again.

Will April be the 100th Warmest On Record?
Anthony – your headline should include the phrase “in the US”. We have enough problems on here with posters confusing the US temperature record with the global temperature record. Note that April in Europe, South America and large parts of Asia has been much warmer than normal so far. AMSU April temperatures are also still above the 1979-97 mean.

[AGWer mode ON]
USA’s cold April is “just weather”. The proof of AGW you have it in Australia’s droughts and (man-made) fires. Of course, next month could be cold in Australia and hot in USA. If that happens, then weather will have moved to Australia and AGW will be hitting the americans, of course. Didn’t it hit before with Katrina? See? You don’t always have weather. Sometimes AGW pays a visit.
[AGWer mode OFF]
(And I didn’t really exagerate anything, this is something completely rational and obvious for AGWers… maybe they lost their reasoning ability long ago)

We had cold March, but warm April (>20°C) here in Central Europe. For the second week we have clear sky and hot air flowing from the south. Vegetation period, which had been 2 weeks behind previous years is just getting normal now.

I love it when a joke isn’t immediately obvious…
Think about it… it’s a bit of a deception to say something is the 100th warmest instead of just admitting it’s the coolest… it does, however, match the mindset of the warmists.
And of course, you can’t argue that it IS one of the ten warmest of the decade. Then again, EVERYTHING in a group of ten is among the top (or bottom) ten.
(Sorry, I just can only read so many variations on the same theme…)

How long does it take before “weather” is considered “climate”?
How long does it take before a shift in “weather” is statistically significant to “climate”? Clearly that depends on the time scales involved, yes? Averaging of weather temperatures over time scales of months, years, decades, centuries?
How long does it take before it’s just a blip? When is a blip not a blip?

Flanagan,
It’s Channel 5 that make up the UAH time series, so that’s why I plotted them and why Roy Spencer has kindly provided 20-year averages for comparison.
Channel 4 (1 km, near surface) and Channel 5 show a very similar offset from the previous year:http://img179.imageshack.us/img179/5913/ch0405comp.png

OT: It is about time for more cosmetic surgery on Dr. Hathaway’s Cycle 24 predictions.
Actually I say that tongue-in-cheek. Who could predict better when the sum of our knowledge is “cycles average about 11.5 years and no one is sure why.”

I’ll be getting some of that snow followed by more cold about 4-5 degree above the records…. set in the teens, 20’s and 40’s. Weather.com has obliterated the first 59 years of our records going back to 1894. As a gold rush town, we would have had even more extensive records, but someone stole the new-fangled (and expensive) thermometers in the early 1880’s.
The thieves have struck yet once again, this time stealing the precious data.
They don’t want anyone seeing what happened in the 1930’s.

“Don Shaw (21:36:27) :
I could be wrong but the Map that shows New jersey slightly warmer than normal does not seem to match the actual observations. But the again what period is the normal based on?”
Don – here in NE NJ, the average temperature so far in April, according to my weather station is 3.1 degees F below normal. Normal is based on long-time NJ climatological records. It is definitely not above normal, at least here in backyard!

P Folkens (22:58:21) : Warmest April this year? It’s not even warmer than an average March yet. The local temps here at the north end of SF Bay are running below the March averages, both in high temp and low. Today’s temps are 5°C below the average highs for April and 2°C below the average April lows. (But, of course, that’s just weather.)
About 2 weeks ago I put in some tomatoes here in the South S.F. Bay area. One, a “Stupice” is cold tolerant. It did fine. Another “Fourth of July” not so tolerant but an ‘early type’ so not warmth dependent. Frost took it. We had an odd cold night with roofs having frost the next morning. At the nursery, they were spraying ‘cloud cover’ on the plants due to “the unusual cold harming some of the plants”… Plants don’t lie like computer models…
FWIW, I now have 3 tomatoes in and growing, but they are growing much more slowly than usual (despite Miracle Grow and the sunniest spot in the garden.) One, Siberia, is doing OK (it’s an exceptionally cold tolerant type) while the others are sulking and barely growing at all. Kale, cabbage, and lentils (all relatively cool tolerant) are doing fine. My ‘cold tolerant’ early purple pod green beans are about 1/2 up, but not very happy yet. Had enough heat to sprout them, then the cold returned and they are again sulking waiting for warmth. Peas are doing OK, though. Peas are cold tolerant.
So my garden (v.s. my well worn planting calendar) is telling me it’s colder than usual by several degrees… Oh, and my corn won’t sprout yet, despite being in starter pots on the sunny exterior shelf on an east facing window where the morning sun usually makes things extra warm reflecting off the window for a double dose… (It fries plants in summer if I don’t shade them).
I think SF bay area needs a darker shade of green on that “departure” map…

pwl (02:12:12) : How long does it take before “weather” is considered “climate”?
Aye, now there’s the rub… By convention, the fiction that climate is the 30 year average of weather is used. This is a lie, but was a convenient lie back when adding lots of data by hand was a pain and it was thought OK to cut off the grunt work at 30 years. To carry this forward into the modern era when we have computers to do that addition and know that there are 30+ year long weather cycles (PDO, AMO, etc.) is now a very convenient lie for the AGW advocates.
It’s the major reason, IMHO, that they can say we’ve had “warming”. Yes, we have. For about 30 years due to a 30 year weather cycle. We’re now headed into a 30 year (or so) cold weather cycle thanks to the PDO swap (rather like the cold period for the 30 ish years prior to the recent warm phase).How long does it take before a shift in “weather” is statistically significant to “climate”? Clearly that depends on the time scales involved, yes? Averaging of weather temperatures over time scales of months, years, decades, centuries?
My answer would be “More than 3000 years since Bond Events are a 1500 year periodic oscillation of weather and you really ought to average at least 2 cycles.” if I had to give a year duration. But…
I’m of the opinion that Pamela has it exactly right: Your climate changes when you change your latitude, your altitude, your distance from the seas, move a mountain range, …
In other words: The Mediterranean has a “Mediterranean Climate” and has had it for thousands of years, even through the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, The cold Dark Ages, The warm Roman Optimum, the cold Iron Age Pessimum, etc. etc. as the very long cycle weather patterns played out. And it will continue to have a Mediterranean Climate for centuries to come. Only the weather will change…http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/bond-event-zero/

Unusually cold start for April here in Portugal, some snow in parts of the country, although March was hot, albeit still within the average. December and January: very cold, lots of snow. I hadn’t seen snow in my city for 20 years. In January alone it snowed twice here. I have no idea what is going on.

“The last ten years have been the warmest in the history of the planet, and this year was one of the ten warmest years of the last decade.”
Warmest in the HISTORY OF THE PLANET? Wow! Goddard, You have got to step away from the Kool-Aid bowl long enough to get an education!
OTOH, it would be fun to see AGWers explain how the temps could be warmer now, with 387 ppm of CO2, than a few hundred million years ago when CO2 was 960,000 ppm.

Its been a cold April here in Michigan. However the Snow Bunny Family that we made in our front yard with the 7.5 inches of snow we got on April 6, is almost all melted, not that it has been that warm since.
On another point, we have gone more than 30 days since the last sunspots were recorded. Anybody know if that is the longes zero sunspot yet during this solar minimum?
The good news is that Global Warming may be over.
The bad news is that Global Warming may be over.

John Finn (00:49:31) : “Note that April in Europe, South America and large parts of Asia has been much warmer than normal so far. AMSU April temperatures are also still above the 1979-97 mean.”
I notice the switch of the ‘mean” from the infamous 1979 -2000 base line down to 1979 – 1997. I suppose that is to eliminate the warmer 1998 -2000 years that would push the mean up.
In any event, what is so special about the period 1979 – 1997 that makes one use it as a base line?

Very interesting.
In Europe, the exact opposite has been happening this April.
We’ve had a long and very snowy winter, with very high snowpack depths on the high mountains.
April, though, has been consistently sunny and warm to date, although snow may start to pass through the end of this week again.
I suspect you’ll find Europe will be above average.

Excuse me smokey, but I find it absolutely logical to put more-than-average temperatures in red and less-than average temperatures in blue. With the other scale, low positive anomalies appear green, which ofr some reason is seen as a “cold” color.

You can download the US monthly temperatures from the NOAA here (not easy to find).http://www7.ncdc.noaa.gov/CDO/CDODivisionalSelect.jsp
The actual US monthly temperature series has a huge amount of variation – March, 2009, for example, was 5.3F lower than March 2007.
The NOAA doesn’t provide US temps in the common Anomaly basis that we are used to (and given the variation, it is difficult to get anything useful out of it) but I have put the data together as a 12 month moving average which at least gives us something to review.
So, here is US temperatures going back to 1895 in Degrees F.http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/8913/ustempsf.png
Here they are in Degrees C.http://img6.imageshack.us/img6/9651/ustempsc.png
Note how much US temperatures have fallen in the last two years. Note that temps were just as warm (or even warmer) in the 1930s than today. Note that temps in the year 1900 were warmer than today. Also note that the trendline has been adjusted upwards by 0.425C from the original raw data.

I and my wife are avid Gardeners.We have old roses,some Floribundas, some Hyrd.Teas. Here in LaGrande,Oregon, we are zone 5a.(USDA) as I write it is snowing.
Again. The Weather is forcast to be in the 70’s next week we will see.I had NO tomatoes last summer.So now the new Greenhouse.Soon as it stops snowing..
If ever…

Meanwhile, in the real world, this on Reuters yesterday, Mon Apr 13, 2009:Farmers face planting delays due to wet weatherCold and rainy weather around the U.S. Midwest was keeping farmers out of their fields and delaying the start of corn planting …
Current field conditions could keep farmers from planting for up to 10 days in some areas … The cool temperatures around the region were keeping fields damp even in areas where it has not rained in a few days…A year ago, U.S. farmers had only planted 2 percent of the corn crop by mid-April. The average for the prior five years was 7 percent. [Emphasis added.]
And this year it’s zero. Check the price of corn futures on the Merc. Flanagan, looks like the farmers disagree with Mr. Hansen.
Hansen et. al. can fake data all they want. Farmers are going to look at soil moisture and temperature before they plant. AGW on one side, farmers on the other. Who ya gonna believe?
BTW, I still predict the growing season will end early.

We’re spending to much money on all of this. What has it gotten us? If we could shift all of this horsepower from looking at polar bears and ice caps to energy efficiency, more crop production, better cars, and weight loss the world would be a better place. Everyone has to have somebody to hate somebody once said.

This was the first Easter here in Central Oklahoma that we have had to be indoors in well over a decade. Cold and rainy. We have had to cover the gardens twice due to ice and snow. And much like Mr. Smith, we are noticing that the tomatoes and peppers are just sitting there, doing nothing while the peas and lettuce are off gang-busters.
All that gobal warming is slowing them down, I know it. :/

Those of you living in the Midwest and the South are welcome to join me in Los Angeles; we need more sensible people living here. It has been much warmer than usual this winter, but a cold spell means I have fruit on all trees. It is still warm this April, 80 degrees F yesterday.
I have been working at understanding the ocean information re climate Bob Tisdale so kindly provides. Perhaps the warmth in Central Europe is because of the Atlantic Ocean? Bob and others can correct me — and I use everyday language. This is what I see in his charts:
N Atlantic, while turning down, still at 0.55C; multidecadal is down
S Atlantic, up and at 0.55C; multidecadal is down
N Pacific, way down
S Pacific, down
Indian, turning back up, always opposes N Pacific, Bob will tell us why at
some point.
Southern (Antarctic – I learned something else new), down below -0.4;
residual down significantly
Arctic, turning down after a big up
The downs win over the ups. Europeans can hope that the Atlantic Ocean does not lose the heat it holds today.

OT
I have Proof of Global Warming.
Toronto Mapleleafs have not won the Stanley Cup since 1967?
And, we all know it will be a cold day in H*** before they win again
Take Hope Toronto, the Earth is cooling!!!

Global warming is like the Kevin Bacon game.
If your not familiar with the game it would work like this:
Someone knows this person who knows this person who knows Kevin Bacon.
Now take your stats no matter where you get them from and end it with: Which causes global warming.

The theme song here in New Brunswick (east of Maine) was “I’m Dreaming of a White Easter”. It snowed on both Easter Sunday and Monday, light where I am (south-central, near Saint John) but enough to make driving risky on the E side of the province.
Definitely must be due to global warming.

How long does it take before a shift in “weather” is statistically significant to “climate”? Clearly that depends on the time scales involved, yes? Averaging of weather temperatures over time scales of months, years, decades, centuries?

According to the Nyquist principle the Nyquist rate is two times the bandwidth of a bandlimited signal or a bandlimited channel.
In case of a lowpass filter or baseband signal, the bandwidth is equal to its upper cutoff frequency.
If you wanted to look at climate rather than weather you would be looking at weather data filtered with a low pass filter that has a high frequency cut off that would toss out all the noise higher than at least the 30 year cycles like the PDO. When we talk about these cycles being 30 years long are we not really talking about the half cycle period? For example they are cold for about 30 years and then hot for about 30 years so the actual frequency would be a 60 year cycle, with each phase being about 30?

If we define climate as being temperature variations of very long period that eliminates the “noise” caused by relatively short term oscillations (in geological terms) like the 30-70 year weather cycles, then wouldn’t our minimum average period be 60-140 years to get a valid measure of climate ?
It sounds to me that they should adopt a definition that identifies what their definition of climate is in a given discussion. For example in toxicology they use the term LD-50 meaning the dose that kills 50% of the test subjects, in radioactivity they talk about the 1/2 life of an isotope.
To be meaningful shouldn’t climate scientists use a term like “Climate-15” that indicates that they want to ignore variations of higher frequency than 15 years?
If they did that, the geologists and the oceanographers etc. could talk apples to apples. Right now using that sort of symbolism the geographers are talking about climate-100meg and the NOAA folks are talking about climate-15 (using a 30 year average) or climate-60 for a full cycle.
Larry

The contrast can’t get any bigger:
While the world has entered a cooling phase the US President is sabotaging the US Economy fighting non existing run away Global Warming:http://www.icecap.us to download the PDF file:
Apr 13, 2009
President Obama’s Red Sea
By Paul Driessen
Irresponsible federal spending, energy and climate change policies will bankrupt America! America is diving into a Marianas Trench of red ink. There is barely a digit of black anywhere on the balance sheet, and spendthrift lawmakers are closing off numerous sources of positive revenue. On the spending side of the ledger, the White House and Congress enacted a $700-billion financial bailout, followed by an earmark-laden $787-billion “stimulus” law and plans to ladle out $1.6 billion in federal government bonuses in 2009. Then came a $3.5 trillion “red sea” FY 2010 budget, and the prospect of $9.3 trillion in total indebtedness over the coming decade.
A March 31 Bloomberg study found that the Treasury Department, Federal Reserve, FDIC and HUD have thus far obligated generations of Americans to $12.8 TRILLION in debt. That’s 90% of our nation’s entire 2008 Gross Domestic Product, notes columnist Deroy Murdock! It’s more accrued debt than 43 previous administrations combined, and it doesn’t include the cost of servicing this debt – or the US share of the $1.1 trillion “global stimulus” devised by the Group of 20, to be administered by professional spenders at the International Monetary Fund. Taxes will soar, to pay off these debts – and cover new levies on everything we do.
As 2,600 delegates flew greenhouse-gas-spewing jetliners to Bonn for another five-star-hotel UN climate change confab, envoy Todd Stern announced that the White House is “seized with the urgency”” of tackling runaway global warming. Looming on the horizon is a hulking 648-page House climate change bill. Equally monstrous Senate and EPA versions wait in the wings.
President Obama wants energy prices to “skyrocket,” to coerce Americans to slash carbon dioxide emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 – to levels last seen in 1905! He says cap-and-trade will “raise” $656 billion between 2012 and 2019, to fund green energy, green job and other government programs. The National Economic Council and other analysts put the tax bite at $1.3 to $3.0 trillion.
This is not monetary manna. It is a massive wealth transfer – extracted from every hydrocarbon-using business, motorist and family, and doled out by Congress and bureaucrats to politically favored constituencies. These all-intrusive energy taxes will hit poorest households hardest. Cap-and-tax will also clobber manufacturing and heavy-industry jobs. Twenty states get 60-98% of their electricity from coal. They form our manufacturing heartland, and every increase in electricity prices will result in more businesses laying off workers or closing their doors, more jobs sent overseas, more homes forced into foreclosure, more families into welfare, and more school districts, hospitals and churches into whirlpools of red ink.
Soaring gasoline and natural gas prices will do likewise. And for what? Hundreds of climate scientists say CO2 plays little or no substantive role in climate change. They point out that even total elimination of US carbon dioxide emissions would quickly be offset by emissions from China, India and other rapidly developing nations. Two-thirds of Americans want our petroleum and nuclear energy developed. They want jobs, security, economic recovery, power that works 24/7. They don’t want to see America file for bankruptcy.
But their rights are being trampled on, by partisan totalitarians whose decrees violate America’s sacred traditions of open, robust debate, sound science and economics, accountability, and majority opinion on critical issues. Whatever happened to the bipartisanship and responsible government that voters thought they were electing last fall?
It’s time to say, enough!

When talking to someone in person we can tell from the tone of their voice, or the expression on their face if they are being sarcastic or serious. But on internet blogs we have no such clues. I think that what smiley faces are for. 🙂

Graphic seems Ok for Central MN. April started out below normal but, thankfully, has moderated.
Anecdotally, it has seemed hazy on the coldest, windless, clearest days all winter. I wonder if clouds and snow really are the whole albedo story.
Anyway, the blue skies seem more pale and pastel than my memories.

When we see something like this which focuses on NA or the US, there’s always the observation or two (or more) about what is happening elsewhere in the world. The Japanese have a great world map updated weekly for those who cannot get enough of this kind of stuff (i.e. wait until the UAH/HadCRUT type monthly data are available). To begin, go here:http://ds.data.jma.go.jp/tcc/tcc/products/climate/synop.html
It will come up defaulting to raw temperatures. Use the pull down menu to switch to anomalies. The latest week is through April 7. It shows how cool it has been in the US west of the Appalachians. It has also been cooler than usual in SE Asia, NE Africa, and a few other places around the globe. At mid latitudes in the NH, ~45 deg N, it has been warmer than normal across Europe and Central Asia.
BTW, “normal” here is, I believe, relative to 1971-2000.
I much prefer this source to the GISS spatial plots of global temperature because I don’t like (or trust) the smoothing GISS does.

I think that map is right on the money according to the forecast here, anywhere from upper 50’s to low 70’s, we’re actually started to get more spring-like temperatures this month after starting below normal, and the good news is we can watch the trees leaf out and the plants pop up because it looks like Winter has called it quits here till next year.

Steven,
“Flanagan et. al
Hate to rain on your warming parade again. This is what Dr. John Christy at UAH told me about the graphs you are looking at-
Our daily products are at:http://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/tltday_5.2
The chart (you are looking at) is of absolute temperatures that have not had the proper base period calibration.”
Fair point – the released calibrated UAH global temperature data show the first three months of 2009 were 0.27 degC warmer than 2008, while the daily figures make it 0.22 degC warmer.
You’re weather, though, may vary.

“will-april-be-the-100th-warmest-on-record”
If your record only goes back 100 years, absolutely. Maybe more.
Properly (ab)used, statistics can prove anything.
p.s.: Since there is no “normal” for Colorado, they can use any color they want for this state. We had a blizzard on Easter. Then it warmed up. If I pack the sno-blower away, it will snow again. Or do something else.

Flanagan
At this point any “anomaly” number that shows continued “warming” is simply prooving that the method for calculating the anomaly is junk. Contact the various power companies for their heating degree days. We need to average about 30 C every day for the rest of the year just to get up to average for the year. Think that’s going to happen? The anomaly numbers are starting to look almost as accurate as the GISS data fudging.

Of course, April still has two weeks to go, and the weather can and will change in that time. In fact Joe Bastardi over at Accuweather (no warmingista, he) believes the NA mid-western cold anomalies will be will be wiped out by the end of the month, as the NA weather pattern shifts to warmer.

I’m a little startled by that orange splotch located directly on top of my home in Central New York. I don’t know where it comes from. I certainly haven’t noticed any warmer-than-normal weather lately. This is a cold little spot — Zone 4 for any gardeners out there — and snow lingering almost into May is quite normal for us. However, it has been even less warm than normal every day this month. My daffodils are barely beginning to bloom, a week or two later than normal, and we’re still wearing our woolies and pushing up the heat. The temp at my house yesterday morning at sunrise was 17 degrees.

“Energy prices are dropping, so Obama must be furious. World spot prices for LNG dropped from their record-highs in 2008 at $25 per million Btu, to recent prices of around $4 per million.”
This is a crisis. And as we all know, this crisis must not be wasted. What a perfect time for this administration to enact legislation. The way I see it, we are already used to paying alot of money to those thieving oil companies, so why not pay ourselves with a $50/BTU consumer adjustment to pay for all those alternative energy jobs?
We’re gonna ALL BE RICH!!!!

“Heavy” snow is forecasted for the Colorado Rocky Mountains starting Wednesday night and ending by Sunday, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center (CAIC). The Colorado snowpack is at or slightly above average statewide. We’ve had copious snow and cold temperatures again this season – that’s four winters in a row with average to above average snow. According to AGW alarmists, ski seasons were scheduled to be shorter, snow-packs shallower, snow-levels higher, and temperatures warmer by now. If resorts didn’t close because of wildlife migrations, many resorts in Colorado could remain open until June/July, as A-Basin does. Last Spring I skied waist-deep powder in mid-May. In some areas above 13,000′ we have permanent snow-fields and cornices throughout the summer. Could they be the beginnings of new glaciers? The Washington Cascades, at much lower elevations, also have an above average snow-pack. The Alps also had massive snow accumulations this Winter. I see a trend, a cooling trend.

“”””””The last ten years have been the warmest in the history of the planet, “””””
In the history of the PLANET? OF THE PLANET?
Yes, I’m shouting, because that is so absurd on the face of it. I imagine that quite a few dinosaurs and therapsids from previous earthly epochs would have a thing or two to say about that. Ah, yes, they’re dead — how convenient for you. Perhaps the most disgraceful aspect of the AGW hysteria is the inability of such people (you included, Mr. Goddard) to think beyond a few decades when discussing a 4.5 billion-year-old planet. Simply incredible that folks with views like yours call us skeptics “like holocaust deniers,” when your side of the debate are worse than hard-core creationists in your simple-minded understanding of the complexities of climate and other natural phenomena.
As to citing the need to be “credentialed” like that crackpot Hansen, what disnigenuous crap.

Wolf Creek announced they’re re-opening again this weekend because of the forecast heavy snows coming for the Southwest mountains. Steamboat just closed though it is expected to snow all week (Steamboat is one of the lowest altitude resorts in CO, though it is also the most northern).
They all stop adding to their snow totals after closing, however, so Steamboat’s numbers are stuck at 405″ (only the 7th time over 400″ ever) in spite of probably another foot or two on the way this week.
Mark

I looked at NOAA’s SST animation and there’s been general warming of the oceans except for the southern sea over the last two months, even so SST’s fell quite a bit at the beginning of this year and may be going to another peak, though it might end up smaller than the last one made last year. The southern sea still sees some very below normal SST anomalies that are trying to spread north in spots excluding the areas that are now frozen. North Atlantic is warming, PDO still in a strong negative phase, ENSO still neutral (though SOI has been climbing on the La Nina side)

For Los Angeles, April 2009, 1st through the 13th:Month to date heating degree days: 44 (normal) 43
Month to date cooling degree days: 5 (normal) 24
Fewer cooling degree days than normal indicates fewer hot days where air conditioning is needed; e.g. it is COOLER than normal.
About the same heating degree days as normal indicates it is not hotter (there would be fewer HDD in that case).
Hmmmmm….methinks that little yellow dot for Los Angeles is based on different data, or is wrong.
This data is fromhttp://weather.latimes.com/US/CA/Los_Angeles.html?almanac=1
apparently source is Weather Underground.

Wandering Aloud,
“At this point any “anomaly” number that shows continued “warming” is simply prooving that the method for calculating the anomaly is junk.”
You might want to discuss your views with Roy Spencer – a contributor to this site – and who is Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer and has responsibility for the anomaly numbers released.

Steve,
“The UAH April anomaly will likely be down from March”
Thanks for the weather forecast. Would you care to predict the 2009 anomaly will be down from 2008?
“…and about half a degree lower than April, 1998.”
No doubt – though the upwards trend is hardly affected by the Super El Niño of that year:http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/32/rssdata.png

“No doubt – though the upwards trend is hardly affected by the Super El Niño of that year”
We’ve already hashed that linear trend nonsense of cyclic data over, and over, and over, ad nauseum. Take out the ’99 Super La Nina too and then show us your fool trend.

Here in Chicago, daily average temperatures for April have been 3.9 degrees F below daily norm. Since January 1st, daily temps have averaged 1.45 degrees F below normal. Data is from O’Hare and available at Accuweather.
We will have to reach at least 3 degrees above average every day for the balance of April for the monthly value to reach normal.
Will be at Wrigley Field tomorrow where the forecast high is 43. I think we are attending a baseball game, not a football contest, but you certainly can’t tell from the temperatures.

chad (12:01:43) :
Central England is currently 2.7C above average for April so far
Well, it helps make up for the freezing January and February! Early Feb had the most snow since 1991 according to the Met Office.
That will have been weather rather than climate though, I expect.. 🙂

From the front page at Lubos Motl’s :
“GISS data for March 2009 are out. With the global anomaly of 0.47 °C, March 2009 is reported as the coldest March since 2000 – and colder than March 1990 and 1998, despite the ending La Nina that is being superseded by ENSO-neutral conditions. That puts March 2009 out of the “top ten” ”
refhttp://motls.blogspot.com/2009/04/giss-march-2009-coolest-march-in-this.html

Today’s forecast in Chicago is for more of the same. The windchills are brutal for mid-April :
Chicago area’s 11th consecutive day of below normal temperatures. Blustery, damp and unseasonably cool. Early March level temperatures — averaging more than 15 degrees below normal! Periods of light rain and drizzle from a heavy overcast. Northeast winds 10 to 22 m.p.h. with occasional gusts to 25 to 30 m.p.h. generate windchills hovering between 28 and 35 degrees. Remaining cloudy Tuesday night, chilly and a bit breezy. Several sprinkles possible.

GISS March colder, GISS April will show a similar trend.
A quiet sun: sinking temperatures, more earthquakes and more volcanic activity
“The increase in volcanism and major earthquakes in recent years and some aspects of triggering of earthquakes are related to changes in solar activity.
“The incidence of some earthquakes (eg Yellowstone US data) appears to increase around both sunspot maxima and sunspot minima which is when the solar wind (the million mph flood of charged particles from the sun) is greatest or least. These times are when the effect of the solar wind to slow the spin of the
earth is greatest or least – changing from increasing to decreasing at the maximum and from decreasing to increasing at the miniumum. – see first graph below: http://www.handpen.com/Bio/yellowst.jpg

Northeast usa is dead frozen. Only Giss could come up with a number that says slightly warmer than usual.
all plants are 2-4 weeks behind. there are no or only few buds on trees. central heating runs all the time. the ground and air is too cold to plant in.
but its warmer than a mythological trendline on the Giss map?

“Don Shaw (21:36:27) :
I could be wrong but the Map that shows New jersey slightly warmer than normal does not seem to match the actual observations. …
Don – here in NE NJ, the average temperature so far in April, according to my weather station is 3.1 degees F below normal. Normal is based on long-time NJ climatological records. It is definitely not above normal, at least here in backyard!

Even the plants and the planet are conspiring to make James Hansen look wrong.
“Grow, grow you blasted plants!!!! Don’t you know that’s it’s warm out there? Here, corn, take a little gander at this here graph I’ve prepared for you in fourteen glorious colors! And you, earth, how can you be frozen? It’s warm!! It’s WARMMM!!!”
Enter two white coated orderlies with a straitjacket….

The last ten years have been the warmest in the history of the planet,
And, according to the new cosmological global warming theory, with the GISS algorithms applied Earth is also the hottest planet in the known universe.Only Giss could come up with a number that says slightly warmer than usual.
Well, it’s easy when you adjust the data so that 100 years ago everything was frozen.

> Steve Goddard (10:30:23) :
> Tom P,
> The UAH April anomaly will likely be down from
> March, and about half a degree lower than April, 1998.
Only if the UAH daily temperature data is totally broken. So far this month, UAH LT is 0.200 above last year, and Ch04 is 0.218 above last year. My quicky regression using LT data looks wonky. Going with the CH04 regression, it looks like April 2009 will be +0.58, unless we have a couple of cold weeks worldwide.

Hmmmmm . . . “normal” . . . now what exactly is meant by that? Of course, the “normal” temperature is that tempertature which it rarely is.
My point being, none of the temperatures I have seen in my many years have been any way in the least “abnormal”.

Just Want Truth… (14:40:56) :
E.M.Smith (04:04:35) :
P Folkens (22:58:21) :
I’m in the San Francisco East Bay—COLD wind today, supposed to go down in to the 30’s tonight
________________________
Me too. My Pinot Noir vines (planted in 2006) have been really taking off with my warmish microclimate, natural irrigation (this year) and lots of sun. If it goes below freezing and kills all the new buds …. I shall be in a bad mood tomorrow evening.

Wondering Aloud,
“At this point any “anomaly” number that shows continued “warming” is simply prooving that the method for calculating the anomaly is junk.”
and
“We are talking about the GISS “anomaly” here. Spencer is NOT responsible for that. His is the UAH set.”
The UAH set shows continued warming. Hence by you own assertion it is “junk.” In fact all of the global temperature datasets (RSS, HadCRUT as well as GISS) are therefore “junk” as well.
It is a curiously unscientific position to reject datasets on the basis of what trend they show.

A little anecdotal evidence:
Yesterday, April 14th, Lake Minnetonka, the most closely watched large boating lake in Minnesota (records back into the 1870s) declared “ice-out”. The records go back into the 1870s, tho a consistent method for determining ice-out has not been used for all of that period. The same method has been used since 1968. The average ice-out date over that entire period is. . . April 13th.

I think Tom there are two things here one is the word “continued” You are drawing a line from 1979 to today and saying continued I am looking at 1998 to today and especially the last 2 years and saying it isn’t there. How much of the 1979-1998 warming is real? How much of the 20th century warming is a figment of the data due to “corrections” station drop out, UHI effects.
The other may be religion. You seem to have aquired one here. I’ve been watching this for over 20 years now and all of the warming predictions so far have been wrong, to believe todays are better has a Seventh Day Adventist feel.

Well the Denver Metro area and areas to the west are expecting 10-20 inches of global warming over the next few days. Here is the NWS storm warning:
=========================
WWUS45 KBOU 161718
WSWBOU
URGENT – WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DENVER CO
1118 AM MDT THU APR 16 2009
…A HEAVY PRECIPITATION PRODUCING STORM IS EXPECTED FOR
NORTHEAST AND NORTH CENTRAL COLORADO STARTING TODAY CONTINUING
THROUGH SATURDAY…
.A STRONG STORM IS EXPECTED TO MOVE SLOWLY EASTWARD FROM UTAH
ACROSS THE COLORADO AND NEW MEXICO BORDER AREA THROUGH SATURDAY.
IT WILL BRING SIGNIFICANT PRECIPITATION TO NORTHEAST AND NORTH
CENTRAL COLORADO. HEAVY WET SNOW IS EXPECTED OVER THE MOUNTAINS…
FOOTHILLS AND ADJACENT PLAINS. THE NORTHEAST CORNER OF OF THE
COLORADO PLAINS WILL SEE A RAIN AND SNOW MIX.
PLEASE STAY TUNED TO THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE OR YOUR LOCAL
NEWS MEDIA FOR THE LATEST UPDATES CONCERNING THIS STRONG SPRING
STORM.
COZ038>040-043-162330-
/O.UPG.KBOU.WS.A.0006.090417T0600Z-090418T1800Z/
/O.EXB.KBOU.WS.W.0009.090417T0600Z-090418T1800Z/
LARIMER COUNTY BELOW 6000 FEET/NORTHWEST WELD COUNTY-
BOULDER AND JEFFERSON COUNTIES BELOW 6000 FEET/WEST BROOMFIELD
COUNTY-
NORTH DOUGLAS COUNTY BELOW 6000 FEET/DENVER/WEST ADAMS AND
ARAPAHOE COUNTIES/EAST BROOMFIELD COUNTY-
CENTRAL AND SOUTH WELD COUNTY-
INCLUDING…FORT COLLINS…LOVELAND…ARVADA…BOULDER…
LAKEWOOD…LONGMONT…AURORA…GREELEY
1118 AM MDT THU APR 16 2009
…WINTER STORM WARNING IN EFFECT FROM MIDNIGHT TONIGHT TO NOON
MDT SATURDAY…
THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN DENVER HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM
WARNING FOR HEAVY SNOW WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM MIDNIGHT TONIGHT TO
NOON MDT SATURDAY. THE WINTER STORM WATCH IS NO LONGER IN EFFECT.
THERE WILL BE A MIX OF RAIN AND SNOW THIS EVENING…BEFORE
CHANGING OVER TO ALL SNOW BY EARLY FRIDAY MORNING. HEAVY SNOW
WILL OCCUR AT TIMES OVER THE URBAN CORRIDOR AND WESTERN WELD
COUNTY FRIDAY AFTERNOON…CONTINUING INTO SATURDAY. ACCUMULATIONS
FROM 10 TO 24 INCHES CAN BE EXPECTED BY SATURDAY AFTERNOON…WITH
THE HEAVIEST AMOUNTS ACROSS THE WESTERN SECTIONS OF BOULDER AND
DENVER AS WELL AS LOCATIONS SOUTH OF DENVER. NORTHERLY WINDS OF 15
TO 30 MPH ARE ALSO EXPECTED LATE TONIGHT INTO SATURDAY MORNING.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS…
REMEMBER…A WINTER STORM WARNING MEANS HAZARDOUS WINTER WEATHER
CONDITIONS ARE IMMINENT OR HIGHLY LIKELY. SIGNIFICANT SNOW
ACCUMULATIONS ARE OCCURRING OR EXPECTED. STRONG WINDS ARE ALSO
POSSIBLE. THIS WILL MAKE TRAVEL VERY HAZARDOUS OR IMPOSSIBLE.
&&
=====================
Not unheard of this time of year but unusual enough to be noteworthy as these heavy wet snows tend to break down trees, and power lines, and collapse a building or two, not to mention cause local flooding when they start to thaw.
I’m betting April will come in cooler than the AWG crowd wants to see.
Larry

Yes, the global warming started falling on my car on the way home from the office (CO Springs). It hailed for a while, but mostly rain, and the temperature is dropping rapidly so the rain will soon be snow and ice. Yay. Nope, not unusual at all as my son’s birthday (Saturday) has seen snow every year for the last 6, which includes the day he was born.
Mark

I had to wear my winter coat the other night here in Phoenix as we hit a low temp of 46 and the high temp was 69, 16 degrees below normal. It was also windy, making it fell extra cold. Al Gore must be turning over in his grave.

SteveSadlov (08:44:13) :
“Bull’s eye on the wheat belt. Of course, recovery is possible. However, if this persists through May, there will be trouble.”
Tarnsman (11:56:41) :
“Ummmm, isn’t that big blue blot (cold temps) right over the grain belt of the US?? Anyone care to venture a guess what that means for the fall harvest? Can’t be good.”
We have not had food shortages in the USA for sixty years that is about to change.
In the spring of 2008 the USDA stated there was no grain reserves left. The grain traders lobbied to make sure there would be no grain reserves rebuilt by the USDA.
“Recently there have been increased calls for the development of a U.S. or international grain reserve to provide priority access to food supplies for Humanitarian needs. The National Grain and Feed Association (NGFA) and the North American Export Grain Association (NAEGA) strongly advise against this concept…Again, we encourage you to reject calls for the establishment of an international or
national grain reserve that would emulate the failed grain reserve policies of the past..” July 22, 2008 letter to President Bush
Here is why they do not want any food reserves, It will mess up the ability to make a profit from human misery.
“In summary, we have record low grain inventories globally as we move into a new crop year. We have demand growing strongly. Which means that going forward even small crop failures are going to drive grain prices to record levels. As an investor, we continue to find these long term trends..very attractive.” Food shortfalls predicted: 2008
About half of the world’s maize is grown in the United States and the USA produces 80% of the cereals that are exported. Meanwhile Congress is working on bills to slap tons of red tape and fines on food growing in the USA “harmonizing” with the EU regs that drove 60% of the farmers in Portugal off their land.
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”

That last quote was from Maurice Strong Al Gore’s mentor.
“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” Maurice Strong
Obama and Congress seem to be working overtime to make maurice Strong happy.

For permission, contact us. See the About>Contact menu under the header.

All rights reserved worldwide.

Some material from contributors may contain additional copyrights of their respective company or organization.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on WUWT. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it. This notice is required by recently enacted EU GDPR rules, and since WUWT is a globally read website, we need to keep the bureaucrats off our case!
Cookie Policy